


Helpless

by CanadianVoodooMagic



Series: Small Drabbles [2]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Child Death, F/M, Okay the summary could be better, SUPER CHARACTER DEATH, but like this is just sad, this is me hurting my son
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-24 21:07:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10749840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CanadianVoodooMagic/pseuds/CanadianVoodooMagic
Summary: A far more devastating result of Eliza's miscarriage, in which Alexander is left alone to be a single father and loses a child.





	Helpless

There had been an alarm.

The sounds of the heart monitor speeding up before a crash team was called in, and he was being ushered out. Everything happened so fast. So quickly does one’s entire world come crashing down around them.

The waiting room had been the worst part. He couldn’t sit still, pacing endlessly between white walls, counting the specks in the linoleum until he lost track of where he was and was forced to start over.

Two hundred thirty-one, two hundred thirty-two.

Fuck.

He couldn’t concentrate, ears open and alert, waiting impatiently for the sounds of voices, for the sound of his name on someone’s lips. Anything at all that could bring him knowledge of what was happening, what was going to happen to his wife, his daughter, his beautiful baby that was supposed to come into this world soon. The contractions had been bad. Far more painful than the other children they had so far, this wasn’t their first. This was their fifth, it was supposed to get easier with every child, that’s what the doctors had said.

But the doctors had also said that his mother would get better, that she would recover from the fever, that as long as she took the medicine she would be fine. And yet, Alexander still refularly woke screaming, panicking and checking that his wife was still breathing at his side. That she was still alive and well, and that she was just sleeping, that the arms around him weren’t cold. Weren’t dead.

Un deux trois. Inhaler.  
He couldn’t take this, he needed this to pass just as quickly, he needed to be holding his child, holding his wife’s hand, kissing the sweat from her brow and to see the tired flutter of her eyes. Eliza was his world.

He looks to his son, pale-faced and vacant in expression, but Alexander was no fool, he knew the tears that had fallen in the same panic he felt eat away at his chest, tear him apart and leave him feeling cold.

It’s then that a doctor walks out, face not giving anything away and Alexander has a million words on his tongue, but not a single syllable leaves his lips. He can’t bring himself to ask so he just stares, looks upon him with a desperate gaze.

The doctor shakes his head.

Alexander’s world falls out beneath his feet.

“I’m sorry Mister Hamilton, but your wife has passed away.”

Every ounce of his being breaks apart, the waves coming to wash away the remaining ashes, and he feels empty. Deft almost. There is a numbness that sets in, disbelief is his vice, the solace that he clings to like a rabid animal does its prey. He imagines this is what getting shot feels like, the hole that opens in his chest and begins to splinter and tear apart the rest of him. There isn’t anything he can say, can not bring himself to part those clever lips, no silver-tongued retort can come to his mind. It can not surpass the mantra of “No’s” That he’s screaming in silence, throat feels numb and raw despite misuse, as if he really had been screaming this entire time. Maybe he had.

He sinks into himself like a ship in the sea, tries to inhale but he cannot manage with the sea in his lungs. Cold. It’s the only thing he registers, and maybe he has died from shock as well, perhaps his heart has stopped for that is the only thing that can make sense. For how can he live without his angel in his world, gracing him with butterfly kisses in the morning, and the gentle embrace when he has made a million mistakes. Who will wash them away with gentle hands, and a smile that could burn passed a million suns?  
A thought rips through the void of his spiraling mind and he looks up, eyes wide and desperate.

“And the baby?”  
It’s a desperate plea, a final piece of hope he clings to, something he needs to know, something he needs more than air in his lungs when the sea has set in, salt burning at bronchial tubes, causing him to struggle like an asthmatic who has just ran a marathon.

The doctor pulls in a breath.

“I’m sorry but your daughter did not survive long passed the birth, we did everything we could.”

It’s as if he feels every one of his hairs turning silver in that moment, the life sucked out of him, the hope that he had clung to in that fraction of a second falling away from him like sand between pressed fingers.

Lionhearted, brave, courageous, prideful, _S T R O N G._

He now feels that stripped away, every descriptor he had always felt described himself being pulled from him like flesh from bone. Being skinned alive would be less painful than this. It takes every ounce of what he has left to think of his other children, to not find the nearest pistol and put a bullet in his head, to not wrap a noose around his neck and cut off his air supply.

**_Maybe he will._ **

Phillip was old enough to care for his other siblings, enough left behind, his father’s legacy standing on pillars of sand, hardened by the ocean’s crashing waves, it would take a devastating nuclear disaster to undo everything he had woven into this country, every piece of its tapestry he had fabricated. The individual stitches of his signature lining the stripes of a flag that stood proudly.

Phillip, who is standing now beside him looking just as lost and confused. He breaks first, a small cry and a whimper and he’s holding onto Alexander but his father does not react, he is a statue, like those of the gods cut from marble, standing there with his feet glued to the freckled linoleum with a million stars across the white surface.  
He wants to go back to counting.

He thinks about dying.

But he knows the loss of a parent, of both, and he does not wish that upon his sons, his daughter, he does not believe they have the fortitude to move on like he had. Angelica already so fragile, rabbit hearted, and angel-faced, Philip brave like him but soft like his mother in all of the ways he always lacked.

un deux trois inhaler

Alexander knows he’ll never not feel this, that it will pull him to the early grave he had always silently wanted. If not a war of countries, a war of the mind will be his downfall. So he stays silent, nods and purses his lips tight.

A tear does not fall for he does not risk it. Because once there is a crack in the dam it breaks apart with unforgiving force and floods the world. His children can not build Noah’s ark and carry themselves to safety. So he can not risk it.

He swallows.

Exhale.

He wraps his arms around his son, rubs his back and lets him cry, lives vicariously through him, breathes in the scent of his hair, of him. Of his child, alive and well and breathing, and sobbing. And Alexander for the first time in his life is helpless.

**Author's Note:**

> The wonderful human who plays Eliza for me requested this, so you can all thank her. As always comments and kudos are appreciated, thank you.


End file.
